Follow Me Home
by Dontaskwho
Summary: After high school, Emison breaks up. Can the time and distance keep them apart? Rated M for possible future chapeters


When I went to school it was a relief to be gone. As much as I hate to say it, it was good to leave that town and its secrets and shadows. And when I got to school none of the places I went reminded me of her, they were all new and exciting. It was like the person who I was before I left just sort of went away. I got to start all over, and after the time I had in high school, with A, with Ali, it was nice to say my name and nobody looked at me with pity in their eyes, or judgement. None of my past followed me across the country to the University of Washington, including Ali.

It was finals week. Towards the end, but each exam was its own challenge, so I couldn't let up until I was across the finish line. Though I hadn't swam since high school, the experience still built into me a sense of endurance in areas of my life I wouldn't have expected. I had my advanced political theory exam, which was essays, and my literature exam, which was essays. My shoulders may not have been getting the workout they used to, but my hand sure was.

I was going home in three days, on Saturday. I made the trip home very rarely since I started school. I flew home maybe once or twice, and my parents came out to visit me a handful of times, but I can feel the distance, and its cold.

* * *

When I go home, it all seems small. All the places and people exactly the same as I left them, it's like going home to a dollhouse, which was not appealing to me needless to say. This time, though, I would be home for a long time. The next semester I had applied to study abroad, and I wouldn't be leaving until February, giving me almost 9 weeks at home to feel surreal.

The girls and I had sparsely kept up. Spencer was abroad, Hannah was in New York, Aria and Ezra moved to Maine, and…Ali. I didn't actually know what she was doing or where she was. Our break up got nasty, which is not what I wanted, but it was too late to be undone. We had gotten used to not talking to each other, and reopening that wound just never seemed to be something either of us wanted to do. So we didn't. It was for the best.

* * *

My mom picked me up from the airport, my dad was on base until later that evening. We talked about school and town, she caught me up on the trivial gossip of Rosewood, and I pretended to care.

It was December, so the trees were bare, and the sky was gray. I liked this time of year, it was like the whole world was mourning all the things that go unmourned. I watched the scene reel past, and I missed the trees on campus. I was craving the soup they had in the student center café, something I knew nobody in Rosewood would have even heard of.

We pulled up to my house and a million memories came back. I got out of the car in the driveway and the wind smelled exactly as I remember it. The yard looked like it did every year at this time. Mom had put the Christmas decorations up, so the house glowed a warm yellow, like the feeling of a cup of hot chocolate after you play in the snow. For just a second, I was a child. I felt a glimmer of a memory of something that had long ago passed: innocence. Before. Before everything. Before I knew what being alive was and I just did it. Like skinned knees and piles of leaves.

The moment passed and my mom gestured for me to come on and get in the house, and I realized I had been standing by the car for a moment too long. I picked up my bag and followed her inside, and felt the heat come back into my face. It was like my body recognized the house before my brain. I kicked my shoes off and put them in the basket by the door, and smiled when I recognized the old habit. I packed all of my things up the stairs to my room, but this room seemed a few degrees cooler than the rest of the house, and just a shade darker. It was untouched, no life was lived here. Not anymore.

It made me remember why I had to leave in the first place.

* * *

"I don't care Alison, that isn't what this is about!"

"Then what is it about Emily? Huh? Tell me because I obviously can't figure it out on my own."

"That's because you don't even know you're doing it! Guys, girls, it doesn't matter. You flirt with anyone you want right in front of me! I am your girlfriend Alison, and it's like that doesn't mean anything to you!"

"Oh, that's real rich Emily. You know I don't do it on purpose! It's not like I am going behind your back, even though you don't give me any attention anymore anyway. All you're worried about is your applications and your resume and it's so shallow, really it is. We can't even have a real relationship because you just want to up and move across the fucking country!"

"I told you to come with me! I'm sorry that my future is important to me Alison, but you can't possibly expect me to put everything on hold and, what? Run away with you?"

"No, not run away with me but at least consult me on these types of huge decisions! We are together, and that makes it our life."

"Maybe I don't think it should be anymore."

There was a long pause. A long, quiet, deafening pause; the sound of it dying it front of us. Her mouth opened and shut and her eyebrows lifted and she blinked hard a few times.

"Well if that's what you think then," Alison picked up her jacket and folded it over her arm. She took a look around and walked to the door, hesitating just a moment longer. "Goodbye Emily." And without looking back, she was gone, and I was standing in the echoes of our fight bouncing off the silence I created. I let it hit me, what I had just done.

* * *

The holidays came and passed like they always did, only now I was old enough to drink the wine, and we didn't have quite as many gifts from Santa. It was nice to let go of school for a moment, once I let myself. It was nice to be home, with cable television and a refrigerator full of food somehow. The laundry was one floor down, and my dad was around more than he was when I was younger, and he was younger. He was reassigned to more of an administrative job last year, and it was nice to see him and mom laugh and live together. They deserved it.

We got a "warm" day a few weeks into January, so I put on my sweater and fingerless gloves and set out to walk around the small town like I had when I was younger. Nothing was too far to walk to, which was a nice change from school, and I remembered the place like I had never left it. The roads and sidewalks and alleyways were a tattoo in my mind that would never fade, it was the grid that was the foundation of who I was to become as an adult. They don't tell you that, how much your home can shape you.

I walked by Hannah's house, because it was close, but I knew her mom had moved out a while ago. There was a minivan in the driveway and a bike in the front yard. The door was open, and it looked cozy inside. It was weird to see it so much different from how it used to be. Actually, I had found, a lot of Rosewood had become like this: the same but different. A few shops had repainted their store fronts, roads had been paved over, there were new stores and restaurants in town, and they even remodeled the stadium that served as the field for all of the sports teams in the county. I was staring at it when I heard the bell ring and a flood of high school students came bursting from the doors of the school laughing and carrying on. I envied them, not only for the life they didn't even know they had, but for the normalcy of their high school experience. I wished I had had the time to be normal, and carefree, before I grew up and those things went away forever.

I was just about to turn and head home when I saw a color hair that I had only seen on one head before. My heart absolutely stopped beating. I took a half a step backwards, but I couldn't look away. Groups of kids were still making their way out, and cars were starting to form a line at the exit, but the color flashed in between them, and I followed it. I took a few steps up the hill I was standing on, and I saw her. She was chastising somebody for almost running someone else over with their car, and I could see her finger wag, and she ran her fingers through her hair in frustration, something she had always done.

This one little action made me smile and I didn't even realize it. She was 20 yards away. She was right there, right where I left her, at Rosewood High.

She was shuffling a group of kids along when she flipped her hair. She looked at me but she didn't see me. It took only half a second for her to realize it, though, and then those clear blue eyes were cutting right into me, and all I could think to do was form a half smile, and raise my hand, as if to wave.


End file.
